Editorial: excavating ‘meaningful differences’ in Asia-Pacific teacher education research

Abstract

We bring to you a new logo printed on the cover of this issue. It was endorsed by the executive committee of the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA), the parent professional association for the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education (APJTE). Those who are familiar with the previous logo would have noticed that the same “waves” design is adopted in the new, contemporary emblem. Representing the Pacific Ocean, the waves have always symbolised the regional aspirations of ATEA and APJTE. They embody ATEA’s commitment to the enhancement of teaching professions in the broader Asia-Pacific region and the journal’s commitment to facilitating the cross-cultural dialogues, exchanges and co-operations about teacher education research in the region. In the very first editorial of the 50 anniversary volume, we traced the use of the term “Asia-Pacific” in the journal’s title (see Takayama et al., 2022). Until the 1995/6 adoption of Asia-Pacific as part of the journal’s title, the journal had been known as the South Pacific Journal of Teacher Education (SPJTE). The geographical expansion from South Pacific to Asia-Pacific in the title reflected the broader political discourse in Australia in the 1990s, wherein Australia’s relationship with its northern neighbour was increasingly recognised as critical for the country’s economic and geopolitical survival. Indeed, as we showed in the editorial, the journal’s name change had a lot to do with the economic interest of the journal, the association, and the publisher who was interested in reaching out to the Asian academic market. But there was also some genuine interest among ATEA membership in broadening the scholarly scope to Asia for cross-cultural dialogues, intellectual exchanges, and international co-operations. Just as with any geographical marker, hence, Asia-Pacific is an essentially contested term, reflecting divergent aspirations of different stakeholders within ATEA, the journal readership and the publisher. Our task as the journal editors is to make Asia-Pacific an intellectually meaningful concept for the association and the journal. As the first step towards this goal, we have been attempting to reflect Asia-Pacific more prominently in the content of the journal. In the same commemorative editorial, however, we also acknowledged the challenges we were faced with in achieving the above goal. We disclosed the fact that the journal currently rejects a disproportionately large number of manuscripts submitted from nonEnglish-speaking countries and regions, including Asia-Pacific. We were confronted with a glaring contradiction between our editorial aspiration and the consequence of our action. In an effort to provide some account for the contradiction, we attempted to clarify our editorial stance, explaining that many of the manuscripts submitted from Asia-Pacific were not necessarily the kind of manuscripts we were interested in publishing. As the editors of the journal, this is a very difficult conversation to have, as we are fully aware that what we value as “good scholarship” cannot possibly be universally accepted. After all, we are the product of years of academic training and socialisation within a limited cultural ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 2023, VOL. 51, NO. 4, 323–327 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2023.2251218